Congestion 384

Playability notes: Designed for vanilla usage, so take your pick. Play with pistol starts.

Congestion 384, though quite small in stature, is solidly refined in both aesthetic and encounter design. While no level is all that hard, each one fits an interesting fight into the space available, and I can't ask for much more.

Inspired by Congestions 1024 and 64, this limitation is something of a middle ground, only allowing for the player to navigate within the confines of a 384x384 block. Needless to say this is very small, and at its very boundaries the player can only move within 12 widths of one's self along either axis. Still, it's enough to fit a fight or two, as this mapset eloquently shows.

The encounters really are well-handled, perhaps due to the limitation itself: each level has to pull its own weight, lest the entire mapset come across as filler. There are a couple stumbling cases wherein an otherwise difficult enemy can be skipped by exiting a level early, but played as-is they would be a fun challenge. The aesthetic also plays enough of a role to benefit encounters, stealthily giving the appearance of a full map but eventually revealing a new group or two.

I'd mention highlights but in the time it would take to read one you could finish its respective map, so instead I'll mention my favorites: MAP03, MAP05, MAP08, MAP10, MAP12-MAP15, MAP18. It's a fun little mapset worth a quick playthrough and an excellent primer for those just stepping beyond the difficulty of Doom1 or Doom2.